ED’S LET­TER

NEW YEAR, NEW BE­GIN­NINGS… this is what we’re all hop­ing to fo­cus on this year…

1. This year is the first year that we won’t have a school­go­ing teenager in the house! I re­solve never to make a lunch­box again, to loll around in bed for an­other 30 min­utes ev­ery morn­ing in­stead of rac­ing through the school run and to go on hol­i­day dur­ing school time (cheaper and qui­eter). I can’t wait. Happy New Year to us all! – Suzy Bro­ken­sha, edi­tor

2. To try to em­brace my empty nest syn­drome with good grace and mind­ful­ness and to use my `free­dom’ to do more of the things I have been want­ing to do for a long, long time. – Caryn McArthy, deputy ed and cre­ative di­rec­tor

3. To learn to speak at least one for­eign lan­guage. I am in­ter­ested in Span­ish, Ital­ian and French. I’m lean­ing towards Ital­ian first so that I can read the menus when order­ing pizza (my favourite!) on my dream trip to Italy! – Crys­tal Matthews, manag­ing edi­tor

4. I’ve been think­ing about it for a while and I think this year I’d like to take a trip some­where with my mom. She’s only re­ally been over­seas once, and that took quite a dis­as­trous turn when all her lug­gage was stolen off the train in Italy. (It shouldn’t be too hard to im­prove on that, surely?) Now I just need to find a des­ti­na­tion that has some old-world charm, nice sandy beaches and isn’t too ex­pen­sive on the rand. I’m hop­ing that such a place ex­ists... – Liesl Robert­son, fea­tures edi­tor

5. The top pri­or­ity on my to-do list is or­gan­is­ing my­self bet­ter, de­clut­ter­ing and at­tend­ing to those long-ne­glected tasks around the house. And, one of my se­cret de­sires is to im­prove my bak­ing skills. I know patis­serie qual­ity is not even an op­tion; all I want is to bake a damn good choco­late cake! Also, I need to stop over­think­ing ev­ery­thing, stress less and spend all my free time with my lit­tle girl (more danc­ing to nurs­ery songs… yay!). – Tas­neem Lar­ney, con­tent man­ager/ test house edi­tor

6. My 2018 started on the sofa, watch­ing movies. I was di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer in Novem­ber 2017 and had the six-hour op­er­a­tion over Christ­mas. So I spent the first two months of 2018 mov­ing be­tween the sofa, bed and lit­tle walks in the gar­den. Two months of sick leave gave me time to re­flect, put things into per­spec­tive and to re­alise that I wasted so much en­ergy stress­ing about things I can’t change. I don’t have a New Year`s res­o­lu­tion for 2019 but want to carry on do­ing what I was do­ing in 2018 – that is, main­tain a pos­i­tive at­ti­tude and fight­ing spirit, con­tinue to laugh and be silly, and spend time with the peo­ple who were so sup­port­ive and show­ered me with an abun­dance of love dur­ing a very dif­fi­cult time. – Rox­anne Cloete, brand man­ager

7. I went on the Hajj pil­grim­age to Mecca last year and felt a sub­tle but pro­found shift. I want to ex­plore that shift, In­sha’Al­lah, and an­chor my life on kind­ness, small sim­ple plea­sures and most of all, grat­i­tude. – Sameena Amien, chief sube­d­i­tor

8. To ap­pre­ci­ate and en­joy ev­ery day. Be happy, spend more time with my fam­ily and let to­mor­row sort it­self out. I feel blessed to be where I am right now. Happy New Year! – Washiefa Lar­ney, pic­ture edi­tor

9. I have de­cided this year that I won’t set my­self up and make New Year’s res­o­lu­tions as I never seem to think about them again once they are printed (shame­fully, a true story!) Rather, this time round I know what I need to im­prove and fo­cus on, and in all hon­esty, I am sure I share these with many other peo­ple. That said, they are health, fit­ness, sav­ing all that can be saved, from an­i­mals to money and my san­ity (if it is not too late lol) – and just to be kind. Kind­ness can trans­form any given mo­ment, some­one’s day, out­look or life. To smile, laugh and find the hap­pi­ness we were all meant to know, in­stead of the daily stress. And last but not least, to give where I can. – Ja­nine Nortjé, se­nior de­signer

10. So here we are again: that dreaded time of the year where `New Year, New Me’ is em­bla­zoned all over the place. This year I have given up on New Year’s res­o­lu­tions. Hon­estly, I don’t feel like stick­ing or com­mit­ting to any­thing! As my kids would say: `Let’s wing it!’ And that is ex­actly what I’m go­ing to do. – Liezel Dukes, pro­duc­tion

11. 118 de­ploy­ments, 15 654 train­ing hours, 5 360 standby hours, and 207 mem­bers. On their own, these num­bers may not mean much. But they are statis­tics for the Vol­un­teer and Wildlife Ser­vices. My New Year’s res­o­lu­tion is to be en­tered in these records as a vol­un­teer. Ev­ery year, at Me­dia24, we have to spend three days do­ing vol­un­teer work, an op­por­tu­nity I al­ways look for­ward to. How­ever, vol­un­teer­ing for the Wildlife Ser­vices means more to me than just three days; it is a jour­ney I want to be in­volved in, with its am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties that are not just lim­ited to fire­fight­ing, but other ser­vices such as driv­ing, lo­gis­tics, fundrais­ing and events. For me, 2019 is about get­ting my hands dirty hold­ing the line against for­est and veld fires, and giv­ing back in ways that en­rich the en­vi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ties. – Jo­han Al­berts, re­toucher

12. Iron­i­cally, for some­one who rarely voices her views much, `Sinel­izwi’ means `hav­ing a voice’. My New Year’s res­o­lu­tion is to find that voice. More of­ten than not I tend to doubt it. I love chal­lenges, so lis­ten­ing, learn­ing, and un­der­stand­ing be­came some­thing I am good at be­cause I in­vest the time. How­ever, that is in­ward work. In 2019, I want to over­come the fear of speak­ing out, es­pe­cially about things I know a lit­tle some­thing about or am ex­pe­ri­enced in. Most peo­ple speak their minds nat­u­rally; oth­ers find their voice a lot later. I fall in the lat­ter cat­e­gory, and I am res­o­lute that my voice will not only be lim­ited to the page, but will be audi­ble in the spa­ces I oc­cupy in 2019. – Sinel­izwi Ncaluka, fea­tures in­tern

13. This year I want to strengthen my con­nec­tion with na­ture, I’ve al­ways wanted to do some­thing that scares me a lit­tle. Learn­ing how to sail is at the top of that list, so here’s to har­ness­ing the wind. – Liza van Deven­ter, pho­tog­ra­pher

14. In 2019, I want to be­friend my­self again. I’ve made the de­ci­sion to in­vest in mean­ing­ful re­la­tion­ships, I plan to spend less time in neg­a­tive spa­ces and around neg­a­tive peo­ple—ba­si­cally I will stop pas­sively ex­ist­ing and try to live life more ac­tively. – Andile Nkosi, mar­ket­ing as­sis­tant

15. To stop apol­o­gis­ing so much. 2018 was the year of `I’m so sorry’ for me. And though there’s noth­ing wrong with be­ing apolo­getic when you are in the wrong, I started say­ing it even if I wasn’t at fault, and it hurt my self-es­teem quite a lot. So for 2019 I’m go­ing to make an ef­fort to avoid say­ing sorry for ev­ery­thing and rather re­place it with some­thing more valu­able – like so­lu­tions. – Charis Tor­rance, fea­tures writer

16. Take time to do the things that give me joy. Yes, I know. It sounds like the kind of schmaltz that tire­some Face­book `friends’ post and in­sist on tag­ging you in on. But the sen­ti­ment has only just hit home. We’ve all felt the frus­tra­tions of the year, what with crime, SARS, Trump, peo­ple, the world… And `just be pos­i­tive’ is too im­prac­ti­cal a di­rec­tive. In­stead, I’m go­ing to do more of what I love: spend the bet­ter part of a day read­ing (you can tell I don’t have kids), binge on pod­casts, stick to my weekly hikes, play more mu­sic (loudly) and boldly claim alone-time with­out feel­ing guilty. – Maya Morgan, sube­d­i­tor